BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY: The New Westminster Columbian newspaper supplement for Dec 1903 published this summary of his career to date:

J.C. Cornish, photographer, took up that line of work in 1901 and succeeded to the business of H.M. Welsh, but he is more widely known from his military career. He is a native of Toronto, where he was born in 1856, and came to British Columbia in October, 1887, as Master Gunner of ?C? Battery, Royal Canadian Artillery. Three years later he purchased his discharge after eighteen years? service, and finally settled in this city. His services as a military instructor are still valued at the local Armouries, and as physical instructor for the Central Public Schools, he is doubtless giving many youths the ground work for future careers as soldiers.

An ad in the same issue of the Columbian stated that he graduated from the "Guerin Photographic College, St. Louis, Mo.," and produced plantinotype enlargements up to 24x30 inches, carbon prints, and "gems of art upon ivory, celluloid, opal glass, or metal."